Travel & Tourism
Bauen Hotel, Argentine "Recuperated Business" Co-op, Wins Reprieve
By Bob Stone (Based on dispatches by Marie Trigona)
Argentina's recuperated business movement held a fair-trade festival September 28, 2007 in support of the Bauen, a hotel in downtown Buenos Aires run by its workforce as a cooperative since 2003. There was indeed something to celebrate: an order evicting the co-op from the hotel had been temporarily suspended.
Grutas Tolantango: A Model Co-op Answer to Globalization?
We rarely inquire about a commodity's origins in wage labor. This is especially true of restaurant meals and resort vacations. Our enjoyment might be undercut were we confronted, for example, with the stifling heat and indignity borne at Disneyland by the person in the Mickey Mouse suit. The suit's fixed smile compels its wearer to endure tail-pulling by pre-teens lest the spell of "being with Mickey" is broken and a refund is demanded. So when those who profit from selling commodities conceal the exploitation in their relations of production, we consumers usually ratify their act by a willed ignorance. We don't want to know how our "vacation" is produced!
